Dansk Tableware -The Original Minimalists

Dansk Tableware: More than any other company Dansk was
responsible for the development of what we all now perceive as the
Scandinavian Modern style. Has their mesmerizing minimalist reign
ended?

In the 1960’s award winning Danish designer Jens Quistgaard teamed up
with marketer Ted Nierenberg to develop a collection of tableware called
which they called Dansk China.

Their first successful pattern was Fjord, discontinued in 1984.

The
Dansk website proudly proclaims it is celebrating over 50 years of
innovation.

Dansk tableware certainly was a true innovation and one
that changed the look of peoples’ houses in the decades to follow.

The Dansk legacy has been sleek, cold minimalistic chic.

Television and radio ads were
proclaiming “Chuck out the Chintz”. I should hate the Dansk duo
really, but the way I see it, every dog has its day and sweet romance is
back with a vengeance, if you hadn’t already noticed. So I’ll forgive
them.

The
battle between classical and romantic has always been feather flying
pillow fight, but I believe the sway has gone our way now for a good
while to come. Let’s rescue romance and salvage the floral festival
from the skip of modernism and smother the nothing lovers for a few
decades.

Despite the word "Dansk" being the Danish word for "Danish" - Dansk is not actually a Danish company!

Ted
Nierenberg was an American businessman who persuaded award winning
designer Quistgaard's to design for his company. Nierenberg had seen
Quistgaard's designs on display at the Copenhagen museum. He saw a
fork, a spoon, and a knife and immediately had the vision for the new
venture.

Many people have business visions, only true
entrepreneurs can make them a reality. The fact that he went ahead and
made an idea into reality is commendable – and quite rare actually.

Quistgaard
was quite a find for Ted Nierenberg. Quistgaard continued as chief
designer at Dansk for nearly 50 years, dying in 2008, and had designed
literally hundreds of products for the Dansk factory. Today Dansk
tableware is purchased by many of the top US retailers such as Marshall
Field's, Bed Bath & Beyond, Carson Pirie Scott, Dillard's, Fortunoff
and Macy’s. Dansk tableware products are permanently on show at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution and the
Louvre, Paris.

This makes Dansk china replacements the dinnerware
choice of the sophisticated set of look-at-me-now socialites. Their
first logo was the duck family - hand-drawn by Quistgaard in 1954. The
duck represented a unified ‘family’ of product lines and the 3 waves of
water were the 3 canals of Copenhagen (even though the company wasn't
Danish it was American).

Redefining the word "tableware," Dansk was the first company to offer
the concept of a fully coordinated dinnerware product line. The company
slogan reads “Life is hard enough - let Dansk make it easy”. In more
recent collections Dansk have put floral and colored motifs into their
collection (seee above graphic) - so even the great pioneers of
minimalism are gaining some romance and frilly things back in their
lives!